![]() Not to say that there’s no sense of luxury. But here, despite some recent renovations in the way of new ski lifts and building details, the resort still takes pride in its “great terrain and short lift lines.” There, large crowds gather at massive lift lines and mid-mountain taco stands. As Ski Mag wrote in a revealing profile on Redford, that was back when Sugarbush “was small and stylish.” These days, small and stylish are two words not often found together when describing mountains like Park City or Vail. It’s more of a hometown ski resort feel, and for many it’s the perfect ski experience.”įor Redford, the experience at Sundance Resort was meant to reference quaint East Coast ski havens like mid-1960s Sugarbush, Vermont. “It’s a much more quaint and intimate feel here, and many guests prefer that experience while on the mountain. “Sundance is different from the Park Cities, Altas, and Snowbirds,” says the hotel, affirming Redford’s vision, in a conversation with MICHELIN Guide Hotels. 500 acres remain in an easement of preserved land, never to see development. His motto was always to “develop a little and preserve a great deal.” To that end, buildings still blend into the landscape - and none will ever rise above the tree line. In 2020, the ownership changed, but Sundance Resort unmistakably retains the Redford ethos. In recent years, Redford had been looking to sell the resort, hoping to find stewards willing to continue and, most importantly, improve upon his long legacy. Soon, he would build hundreds of private and rental cottages to help fund that artistic engine. In 1981, he invited ten emerging filmmakers to come to his mountain sanctuary and develop their independent projects. ![]() Over the following decades, Redford created his own haven here, a marriage between art and nature shielded from the mega-developments rising like new mountains out of the Rockies. In 1968, the actor gathered investors and bought up 3,000 acres of his favorite place, named it after what was to become his most iconic character, and set forth with a goal of environmental conservation and artistic experimentation. And while you didn’t have to be Hollywood royalty to see that the unfettered development across Colorado and Utah would threaten its natural beauty, you had to have some connections to do what Redford did next. Less than a decade later, Redford was a movie star. ![]() For him, the 12,000-foot mountain evoked the Swiss Alps, its vast landscape holding all kinds of possibility. But the site outside of Provo had him instantly enthralled. He was just a college student, motorcycle-bound on his road trip to the University of Colorado. When Redford came across the family-owned Timp Haven ski area in the 1950s, it was purely by chance. But for as many stories as the cinematic Sundance has launched, the resort’s own is just as worth telling. Today, people are more familiar with Robert Redford’s other Sundance in Utah, the wildly successful film festival that takes place in nearby Park City. It was all part of the actor’s plan when he established the resort more than 50 years ago. It’s a ski resort that’s focused on art, community, and the environment at least as much as it’s focused on skiing. Roger Ebert called Downhill Racer, the 1969 Robert Redford film about competitive alpine skiing, “the best movie ever made about sports - without really being about sports at all.” You could apply a similar description to Redford’s Sundance Resort in Utah.
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